Choices are the result of free will. I always think about this, when it comes to the Third Step. It was a huge problem for me early on in this program. For some reason I either missed the word “care” or I just didn’t understand.
Who me? Here I was, so ego driven that I thought I knew everything, and I failed to grasp the meaning of this Step. It was my sponsor and some others, who opened it up and allowed me to take this Step.
My sponsor was the one, who told me that all I was doing was simply making a decision to turn my will and my life over to the God of my understanding. However it was just the care of my Higher Power, I still had my free will. What decisions and choices I would make were up to me.
Would I be willing to choose to do what I believed was God’s will for me? A big question for an alcoholic like myself, who still wanted to run everything in my life. Now I was going to have to reconsider all my choices. Based on my past history, particularly when I was drinking and my screwy thinking, what would I do?
I got a phone call, as I was writing this, that brought me back to the beginning of my program. Actually a Twelfth Step call. A man I had met at a meeting, who had gone back out and drank again. I told him what it was like, what happened, and what it’s like now. Told him to go to a meeting and I would meet him at the meeting on Monday. What a surprise. It took my breath away.
But in the process of working with this man it reminded me that I took that Third Step before I ever saw it. Unwittingly I made a choice and that choice was to get sober and stay sober. I did ask God for help and got it. I was told I had a spiritual awakening before I ever came to this program. But I had really worked the first Three Steps without knowing it. I hope the man who called does at least the First Step, as suggested..
I’m only saying all of this because of decisions we have to make all the time in this way of life. They all have to do with that Third Step one way or another. I don’t always remember that or think that way, unfortunately. Never perfect. Still human after all this time. But still trying.
Anyway, I was thinking about decisions and choices and the process that has gone on ever since I came here. And it tells me that what I’m doing here is all about sobriety. My number one priority. To stay sober and help another alcoholic. And that call, which came in the middle of thinking about this, was a gift from my Higher Power. Thanks.